


All the Devils Are Here

by Whreflections



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Supernatural, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Demons, Kid Fic, M/M, Post Avengers (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 10:37:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of losing Phil, Clint makes a choice that he's not sure he beileves, only to find he really is going to have to live with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Conviction

**Author's Note:**

> So when I started this, I'd just started to recover from breaking my arm (long story, lol), and tiny drabbles were all I could do, so I called this a verse. Really, though, it's a story just told in weirdly shaped chapters, XD So, while it starts out in short bits, those bits get longer as it goes. ^^

  
_“You lack conviction.”_  
  
Just then it’s the worst thing he can think to say to him, because in that breath he’s full of so much of it. Conviction that it’ll all have been worth it after all, that they’ll rally around his death like he knows they can and they’ll all, each of them, be exactly who they were born to be. More than that, though, there’s what he knows down to his core, unshakable faith in a man somewhere on this definitely not sinking ship with eyes he doesn’t recognize in a face he could never forget.   
  
If he knows anything, he knows  _him_ , knows that he’ll free himself somehow, and even though he may not make it here to this place before the end it’ll be his hands that touch him last. Even if he’s no longer there to feel it it’s a good thought, comforting and warm like his voice’ll be when he tells Phil’s parents.   
  
He has that faith and it’s good, calming, but the thing about dying that he realizes more and more with every breath is how it hurts in ways that have nothing to do with the hole in his body. It’s the pain of losing, not breath or blood but the life stretched out before him that crumbled away like broken glass. There was so much time in waiting, waiting for Clint to stop fooling around, waiting for him to grow up and move in. He did and they were making it and it was real and of course that still matters but instead of the past flashing before him as he pants and blinks he sees a wedding and children and his mother a grandmother to a little boy Clint carries on his strong shoulders. It hurts, God it hurts, but it’s a good image and he keeps it, lets it burn behind his eyes as he shuts them.   
  
He’ll close them while he waits to hear Clint coming. A minute, just a minute…


	2. Cadence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint remembers a promise he made to Phil long before he thought it'd be hard to keep.

There’s a certain rhythm to some things, to the pull of string and the flight of an arrow, like the steady drip of blood from a wound or the deep constant of breath as it cycles to break silence. The others probably think it’s comforting for him and maybe it should be, but it isn’t. The thing he holds in his hands is by this point as much a part of him as his hands and fingers, and nothing about himself could ever ease anything now, not now that he’s failed.   
  
When he sleeps(fitfully, on the floor or in a hide, not in their bed) he sees it all again, sees Loki’s hand close over an arrow that didn’t even fly for the right reason. He’d stood there on that rooftop thinking it was all about his own pride and some about the mission, never knowing he had yet to begin to understand what it was to truly hate. He’d never felt it like this, not even after the crash as a child. He was young when they died, small and frightened and anyway the car just slid off the road. There was no one to blame.   
  
On the third day after, he pulled himself together enough to tell Fury he needed to see it, needed to watch the surveillance tape and see the work of Loki’s hands, to watch the man he loved breathe his last. He should’ve been there, should’ve been able to hold him and comfort him and lie to him and since he was robbed of that, watching seems all he can do. It makes sense, to him. Phil’s the one that had to die without him. The least he can do is put himself through hell over it. Fury said no, of course he said no, but Clint isn’t an island anymore. He hasn’t been for years, really, not since they met and fell in love and swore their lives to each other, not since he met Natasha and finally knew what it was to have a friend. Now, his world’s bigger than that. He has friends, plural, and so he appealed to Tony, the man who could unseal the most sealed files, and he nodded his thanks when Tony pushed the drive into his hand next to a flask of scotch.   
  
Honestly, it didn’t make him feel any different. He wakes up hollow and he goes to bed hollow, and no amount of psychological torture he can concoct for himself will ever make him feel any worse. He’s lost Phil, and really, he should know that nothing could ever be worse than that. So he keeps to himself and he shoots and he hides and lets these people he’s come to love whisper that he’s healing because what else does he have? He can’t imagine being better and he can’t seem to make himself worse and he’s got to keep living with it because once upon a time, he promised.   
  
He remembers, there was a funeral and Phil’s aunt crying and Phil silent and dark until after, until they were alone at his parents in his childhood room and Phil had pressed him to the wall. His heart beat jackrabbit fast against Clint’s chest as he whispered unsteady against his neck. “No matter what, don’t you ever…promise me.” He’d said first in as a light a voice as he could that it’d never come to that, that even with their jobs they’d be alright, that he’d be there to save Phil’s ass. He wanted to wipe the fear away from him, hear him answer that he didn’t need protecting(because he didn’t really, not really, not any more than Clint himself did). Instead, he’d only repeated it, softer. “Just promise me.”   
  
“Alright, sweetheart, I promise. I promise.” 


	3. If Wishes Were Horses...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Tony makes a decision of his own, Clint looks back on a choice he now has plenty of time to regret.

Staring into the dark with the shape of  _it_  pressed into his palm, he sees that night like it was yesterday.  
  
He left Phil to sleep, slid out from under his arm and kissed his forehead when he muttered so he could go downstairs and make a pot of black coffee. He didn’t pour a cup for himself, just perched on the back of the fading brown couch in the living room next to a cat that insisted on cleaning his arm and waited for David. For years David Coulson had been working graveyard shifts, a firefighter that loved his work too much to retire when he could have. Phil figured he’d be at it till he died, his worried words never a match for the pride in his eyes. It was a good look, and no matter how much he denied it it was the same one he sometimes got when Thor called him Son of Coul; Clint had seen it.   
  
Truthfully, all that pride was well deserved. David had raised three children, saved countless lives and loved one woman. He was smart and kind and when Phil came out as a teenager, he’d decked his brother when he apologized to David for having such a son. He was a good man, a rare thing in Clint’s experience, and the respect that inspired in him was most of what had dragged him downstairs in the middle of the night to hold this vigil. He was in love and he’d waited and they’d shared Phil’s house and it was perfect, so perfect, and last month in Austin he’d bought a ring. He’d tossed the idea of this talk around in his head at first, everything from “You can’t have him think you’re treating him like a girl.” to “Don’t be an idiot, Barton, it’s about respect.” in the end, of course, that side had won out.   
  
When it did come, that talk, it opened up his eyes. At least, that’s what he’d thought at the time. David listened, then he took a deep breath, stirred his coffee and nodded toward a picture hanging up in the kitchen. Phil, an 8 year old Cap with what looked like a painted round sled shield and a homemade suit. He beamed out of the Polaroid with an unspoiled joy that could make Clint hurt if he looked long enough.   
  
“You see that, up there? I’m not stupid, I know, I know he’s a man but he was my boy. He  _is_  my boy, and that’s the only way I’ll ever see him; just past waist high and jumping over the couch and breaking his wrist cause he’s gonna be a superhero when he grows up. So the thing is…” A sip of coffee, just long enough to give Clint’s heart time to really race. “I love you Clint, I do. And I don’t doubt that you want just what you said; you tell me you want a family with him and I believe that. But the thing is, son, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. If you marry him, these people you hunt, they have ways of finding these things out. I know enough about the work you do and a little about the things Phil hopes you’ll do…you’ll paint a target on his back. Could you do that? Could you do it to  _children_?”   
  
“If I don’t do this-” his throat seized around a million things, how much he needed Phil to know that he wanted this with him, that he wanted everything with him. God, when he bought the ring he could already see it on his finger. “I don’t live my life in fear of anybody.”   
  
David seemed to nod with his whole body, his eyes studying the worn wood grain of the table before they came up to meet Clint’s. “That kinda bravery’s a good thing. It is.” He stretched his hand across the distance, calloused thumb rubbing gentle against Clint’s wrist. “All I’m sayin’ Clint is this: can you tell me, absolutely, that you can keep him safe? Can you tell yourself that? Cause I know that sometimes, we might feel like we’re doin’ something for love when we’re really doing it just cause we want it so bad we can taste it. That’s all I’ve got. You’re a good man. You’ve got my blessing either way; just think it over.”   
  
He had. Till dawn he’d watched Phil sleep, and he’d kept thinking when he woke up and reached to kiss him, Phil’s hands warm and heavy and soft. He’d thought all the way through breakfast and a picnic with his niece and the plane ride home, and when they got there he’d put the little black box in the back of his safe in the closet.   
  
He’d thought then that he was being a good man, the kind of lover Phil deserved. Responsible on something other than a mission, for once in his life. Now, three months after Phil’s death and two hours after Tony’s incredibly public proposal to Pepper, he just feels like throwing up. Every doubt he could’ve ever had has sprung to fantastic, swirling life. Did he ever wonder about it? Did he think Clint didn’t want it, wasn’t ready for it, wasn’t stable enough? Would he have loved the ring? (he would’ve, he knows it. It suited him.) He’d have put it on his own hand and they’d have made love and there isn’t enough air, not on this fucking roof, not anywhere.   
  
He slides it quick down the shaft of the arrow, still feels the circle it left in his palm as he lets it fly. The dark of the woods around him swallows them both, arrow and ring, and Clint gasps at the chill night air in an attempt to push the nausea away. He had the ring, he had the goddamn ring and he had the will, and then he thought he was keeping the only man he’d ever given his whole heart to safe. He thought…well.   
  
Like he’s realized a thousand times in the past three months, it doesn’t really matter what he thought. Not anymore.


	4. An Incredible Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In trying to hide from the new reality he's found himself in, Clint just might have stumbled onto his answer. That is, if he's willing to take it.

_A heart that beats,  
An incredible machine  
Made of blood and love and hope and lust and steam  
-Incredible Machine, Sugarland_  
  
There’s a multitude of reasons he shouldn’t be where he is. He’s famous now, a proper hero, and heroes just don’t  _do_  this. It’s gotta be why they’re so dysfunctional, honest to God because if they don’t flip the fuck out they just bottle and yeah, he’s been bottling shit his whole life and letting it come soaring out off his bowstring but this, this is too goddamn much. He’s more than tired, and even if he’s already sorry he told Steve to mind his own fucking business, he’s not sorry he said he needed some space. There’d been a glint to Tony’s eyes for a second that almost told him he was about to get decked, it was so close, but then Tony was shoving keys in his hand and saying, fine, get out.   
  
Two states later he almost called to apologize, but he knew they’d just ask him back and no, not yet. Not yet. He knows he’s being watched, knows there’s someone on his tail and back home Fury’s probably in with some suits and shrinks as they hash out whether his latest outburst makes him unfit for duty. There’s a part of him that’s scared shitless by how little he cares what the answer will be, but he keeps shrinking it with every drink. Whatever ‘rehab’ they come up with for him, it’ll probably be just as effective as the rest.   
  
At five months after, the assclown doing his psych eval had said, “I know it’s hard losing a spouse”, and he’d stood up and put the man’s paperweight through the window.   
  
“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?”   
  
He’s in Georgia, in a dive playing Your Cheatin’ Heart, and he’s halfway wasted and thinking how Tony’d approve and how Phil wouldn’t and fuck, even now it’s just that one damn thought and everything blurs. Before this, he hadn’t cried since he was a boy. Now, he’s lost all predictability. He wakes in the night with it, cold and gasping and frightened of specters he couldn’t begin to describe. Growing up, he never had a home. It’s a hard thing, now, to be faced with the only one he ever had that’s suddenly become just a house.   
  
He never got the chance to have a husband to lose. He could blame his work or Phil’s father or the fact that they were always on the move but none of it sticks. No, the blame only feels right where he’s sure it belongs: squarely on his own shoulders.   
  
“Those drinks aren’t cheap you know.”   
  
The man on the stool next to him is all blurred lines in the dark of the bar, dark eyes in a deep brown face that’s almost smiling at him like he thinks this is simple, like Clint’s just had a bad day and if he buys him some Jäger Clint’ll follow him home. In one draw, he finishes the drink.   
  
“Good thing it’s not your money.”   
  
“it could be.”   
  
On some level he realizes the kind of man he’ll never be, because the guy’s attractive and he sees it and he’s drunk and it’s been months and the thought of this man’s hands on his body still makes his stomach turn. He’s still in love, goddamn hopelessly in love, and he’s starting to suspect it might be a lifelong condition.   
  
“No offense, buddy, but you’re wastin’ your time, alright? Try it out somewhere else or go to hell, it’s all the same to me.” it isn’t, of course it isn’t and something in him tells him he’s not cruel, he’s never cruel, but maybe that matters less now that everything has changed. The man only chuckles, low and soft, and Clint doesn’t even look up. “Think that’s funny?”   
  
“A bit, Mr. Barton.”   
  
With that, the man earns himself as much attention as Clint’s distracted mind can offer. “So who sent you, Fury? Loki?” if it’s the latter, he’ll send a message of his own right back. If it Fury, well, Clint’s been taught how to disappear.   
  
“You know it’s actually neither, but I’ve got my own reasons.” there’s something in it a little too taunting, and when Clint finishes the first sip of his fresh whiskey he looks over. The eyes he meets flash red, so quick if he didn’t trust his eyes so much he’d have thought it was just the drink. He’s not quite as gone as he thought, because before the first breath’s out he’s got his hand wrapped around the switchblade in his pocket.   
  
“Who the hell are you?”   
  
Still, he hasn’t lost his smirk. He raises his hands in mock defeat, grinning like he’s got all the cards.   
  
“Oh I’m just a business man. I’m here to talk to you about a deal…about Phil Coulson, and all those years you think you missed.” 


	5. Too Late to Apologize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint makes a choice that he's not sure he beileves, only to find he really is going to have to live with the consequences.

Relatively speaking, ten years is a long time. It’s the length of time spent before a first high school reunion, and it’s longer than Clint’s ever lived in one place. It’s a  _decade_ , a signpost for measuring time, and it’s longer than the typical lifespan of some breeds of dog. When you look at it like that, ten years starts to sound like a really long time.   
  
Clint didn’t really take the time to look at it all; he didn’t need to. He needed only to know that no, the guy wasn’t just pulling this out of his ass. (Not that he fully believed that the night of, but he certainly wanted to) He was a demon, an honest to God demon working the crossroads outside the bar, and he was ready and willing to give Clint exactly what he wanted. When he agreed, he was more than a little startled there wasn’t any blood involved. He’d held his arm out, ready to feel the bite of steel against his skin as part of some voodoo mumbo jumbo, and he’d almost balked when Greg(“Gregory Erkin, best ride I’ve ever had”) had used the arm only to yank him in close.   
  
“Oh c’mon, Barton. It’s not your blood I want.”   
  
The kiss was messy and rough, and he threw himself into it with an unsettling fervor. It took him back, a warped mirror of childhood memories, of screwing his eyes so tight as he flipped a dingy penny into a fountain. With wishes so desperately desired, they somehow seemed just a little more possible if he physically wished so hard it hurt. It had never worked before and he’s sure it won’t work then; he’d long grown out of superstition and even if this guy seemed real it’s so much more likely he’s a device of Loki’s but still,  _still_. He was too defeated not to try, to hope, even as a tiny part of him almost hoped it was all a trick and the guy was just going to take him out once his guard was down. It’s not quite suicide if it’s not his own hand, after all.   
  
So he took Greg’s face in his hands and kissed him like his life depended on it just in case Phil’s actually might, and he ignored everything inside of him that twisted up in pain at the way he tasted like ash and blood, the way something so simple as his lip between Clint’s teeth felt so horribly wrong.   
  
He’d never been sure if he believed in God, though he always deep down leaned toward the possibility that he must. Over the course of his life he’d spent too much internal thought yelling at the guy to actually say convincingly that he didn’t believe. After the kiss, panting and a little lightheaded with drink and adrenaline, the fervent hope that God didn’t exist after all snaked its way up through his thoughts. Without any kind of god there’d be no potential of a heaven for Phil to possibly be watching him from, no chance that he’d just seen Clint kiss the hell out of a man in a dark alley that may or may not have just taken on ownership of Clint’s soul.   
  
Still feeling a little unsteady but too sick to hold on anymore, Clint pushed Greg away to stand on his own. There in the aftermath he felt weak and hopeless, a pathetic creature, and he wiped his lips off on the back of his hand in the desperate hope not to ever taste Greg again.   
  
“So that’s it then.” He said it, some crazy part of him even still hoped for it, but the grasping belief he’d felt when they first talked about lost years seemed to have thoroughly faded.   
  
Greg laughed clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You do go above and beyond, don’t you hero boy?” The hand on his shoulder reminded him of Loki in his mind, heavy, unwanted pressure. He shrugged away, stumbled back toward the mouth of the alley and society and a road that could lead him to a nearby hotel. “Might want to start heading home now, Barton. He’ll be waiting for you, and I don’t think I’d want to waste those awfully expensive minutes you just bought.”   
  
He left behind the sound of laughter, and by the time he got to a motel and was ready to fall in bed he’d realized two things. First, the whole thing was probably nothing, probably drink and grief even though he didn’t feel all that drunk. Second, if it wasn’t? If it wasn’t, he had to hope to that possibly existent God that Phil hadn’t seen a thing, because the more he thought about it the more he was pretty sure that all promises aside, Phil would’ve rather he took a gun to his head than bargained away his soul.   
  
In the dark, he shuffled the sheets around on the bed until it felt thoroughly mussed and a little less empty.   
  
“If you’re listenin’…look, don’t worry, sweetheart. It won’t work anyway.”   
  
When the call comes in the next morning, he at least has the empathy to be sorry that he’s not sorry, if that even counts. The whole drive back, he turns the same words over in his head.   
  
“You need to get your ass back here, Barton. He’s…we can’t explain it.” Even so, they’d tried. In the time he’d been sleeping off his trip down the rabbit hole, Phil Coulson had showed up in Tony’s lab. After the panic and initial widespread assumption that he was Loki(or an animated corpse under his control), tests were run and an emergency request was sent back to Providence to exhume the coffin. It was empty, completely empty and without a mark on it, and the test results were all solid. For whatever reason(as they said, though Loki and some sort of as yet unknown nefarious agenda remained the prime suspect), Phil Coulson was alive and confused and standing in Stark’s lab complaining about its increased propensity as a fire hazard.   
  
Being sorry he’s not sorry may not quite count, but in the face of that it’s all he’s got.   
  
He’s had months of dreams and desperate nightmares where he imagined almost every way he’d react if he ever saw Phil again, but the moment itself overshadows them all. He doesn’t pick him up, doesn’t tackle him, doesn’t kiss him until they both bleed, doesn’t break down in tears. Phil’s dress shirt is actually rolled up to his elbows and he’s leaned up against the wall reading a brief that Clint yanks from his hand and he’s never, ever looked so beautiful. Clint just wraps him up in his arms without a word because he’s scared that even if he tried he couldn’t speak, and he holds on. Phil’s arms come up to hold him fiercely tight, and he’s reminded that last time Phil saw him he wasn’t himself, was locked away behind Loki’s tricks. Phil might not have lived long with his worries, but the way he can still feel them in this reminds Clint he’s not the only one that’s been through hell. When he whispers Clint’s name against his chest there’s something both awed and broken about his voice, something all too raw.   
  
Fuck no, he’s not sorry. It’s not like his soul was doing him all that much good while he was trying to survive this damn mess anyway.   
  
He physically can’t let go, he  _can’t_ , and when Phil realizes he’s got no intentions of letting go he murmurs first something low and unintelligible, his head turning to press his lips to Clint’s temple.   
  
“You’re alright” he starts a little shaky, comforting himself more than Clint until his voice evens. ” It’s alright, Clint. It’s alright.”   
  
“I lost you.” He means to apologize, to talk about how he should’ve been there and he should’ve held him and a thousand other mistakes but now that he has a chance, none of it will come just yet. He pulls back just enough to see those beautifully familiar eyes, Phil’s face cradled in his hands. “What do you remember?”   
  
“I remember…I know what happened to me when Loki escaped, but after that there’s nothing.”   
  
Finally, finally Clint kisses him. It’s deep and searching, wet and intimate even though half the damn teams watching, and he breaks only to mutter “Phil, I’m sorry.” once against his damp lips. He can let him think it’s about not being there, maybe even about the mind control mess, nothing else.   
  
 _I’m sorry, Phil, I’m so sorry, but I wouldn’t take it back. I wouldn’t. You’re worth it._  


	6. I Want The World To See You Be With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Phil back in his arms, for the most part, even if it cost his soul nothing seems anything but right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, so this post was supposed to be the first year…have the first night instead, lmao

Despite the physical proof and all the security checks he passes, Fury insists on keeping Coulson under lockdown for two weeks. Initially he tries to say that it’ll be alone, that he has to be kept separate until they’re ‘sure’, like he’s a fucking rabid dog. Honestly, Clint’s too worn down to threaten. At this stage, anything he does will be action, not threat, but lucky for him, he’s reminded once again that everything in his life has changed. He says he’s staying and Steve steps up behind him just like that, like there’s no question about it, and as he’s technically Clint’s commanding officer, regardless of Fury’s rank it’s enough to give everyone pause. Even stranger, maybe, is the fact that he doesn’t even have to look to know everyone else is with him too, to know that Nat’s hands are near her hips and her knives and Bruce is clenching his hands like he’s trying just a little harder than normal to keep control. He does that sometimes when he’s got the other guy fully corralled, when he’s facing someone he knows he can fool because they expect the worst of him. It never works on the team, and now, he never tries.   
  
It works, and that’s great, but the whole bureaucratic clusterfuck of the thing means that their first night back together is spent in a SHIELD issue twin bed, in a room smaller than many of Stark’s closets. It’s irritating, sure, and Clint knows there’s gotta be a camera, gotta be more than one  _kind_  of camera, but he really, really doesn’t give a flying fuck. If whatever young officer they’ve got on nightshift monitor duty really wants to watch them fuck, they’re welcome to it. There’s things he’d like to keep between the two of them, even as little of a filter as he has, but the thing is, privacy isn’t a necessity. Getting his hands on Phil undoubtedly is.   
  
The door to their barely-more-than-a-glorified-prison-cell is still clicking shut as Clint backs Phil up against the wall. He slaps the light switch, the hum of dying fluorescents ringing in his ears as he brings his arms up to cage Phil in. His hands are already sliding up under Clint’s shirt, fingertips skimming his skin in inventory, dancing light across his already heaving ribs. He feels shaky, mingled adrenaline and shock and relief and desire. It’s all catching up to him, the wracking loss he’d felt last night, the crushing pressure of thinking that that was the rest of his life looming before him, a thousand nights just like that, then the kiss and the deal and oh God, for once in his life, something he did actually went right.   
  
Coulson’s hand presses against the small of his back, pulling him closer as his lips brush Clint’s ear. “Clint,-“   
  
He can feel more than hear it, the threat of worry and discussion and he can’t do that first, he just can’t. It’s just that there’s so much he wants, so much contact that he  _needs_ ; the deeper concern is that the team he can deflect but Coulson himself is something else entirely. He hasn’t lied to him in years, not just because it hurts but because frankly, it just isn’t practical. He knows Clint better than anyone, and if he asks how Clint’s been, even if he asks how he  _is_ , the answer isn’t going to be an easy one to structure.   
  
Clint can’t let that happen yet. He yanks open Phil’s shirt, just the top two buttons, just enough to give him access, and he fists his hand in the material as he nuzzles into the open collar, hiding his face against Phil’s skin. “Sir, please.” It’s the best card he’s got, the only plea that might be listened to. Back in the beginning, before the Avengers came together, before they were really even fully planned, Clint was completely wild and incorrigible and if he hadn’t had such a high body count as an assassin SHIELD probably would’ve thought it was better to be rid of him. He’s still those things with most everyone, but Coulson was the first he came to listen to, the first he gave respect to before he gave him everything else. In the field, if he ever calls Fury ‘sir’ it most likely means he’s about to go off grid. When he says it to Coulson, it means he’s listening.   
  
“Stop that.” Coulson knows what he’s doing, he  _always_  knows what Clint’s doing, but his hands are moving again and he follows up the whisper with his lips on Clint’s neck, tracing the slightly straining muscle he finds there.   
  
Clint moans, milking the advantage he’s got until his brain spirals down to one point, his fingers stumbling blind over something that stops him cold. It may be healed over but he can feel the thick cord of a scar there, all too fucking close to Phil’s heart. Jesus, it’s almost right on top of it, proof of Loki’s sadistic aim because he could’ve hit it dead on if he wanted, could’ve killed him almost instantly but he just wounded him, left him to bleed out on the floor and he knows just how long that took, he watched every agonizing second over and over and…  
  
Phil’s fingers rake through his hair and he whispers Clint’s name in a way that should be comforting, but he’s past thinking. He gets a grip on Phil’s hips, tight but not bruising, and he pushes him to sit on the edge of the bed, low enough that when Clint drops to his knees his lips can find just the right spot. He trails his lips all along the scar, everything, every _thought_  is completey whited out but the feel of scar tissue under his lips and tongue and the grounding pressure of Phil’s fingers in his hair, holding him there with just enough pressure to make sure he’s getting through, to make sure Clint can feel him.   
  
Clint hears his own voice absently, harsh and broken, “Never, never again, do you understand me, never-“ and if Coulson answers him, he doesn’t quite hear it. There’s something ringing in his ears but he feels the rumble of his chest, and he finally stills his incessant tracing to press his damp cheek against Phil’s skin. Phil’s heartbeat is right there, vital and strong, and for just a minute he closes his eyes to listen, the ringing fading away. His face is hidden not just by the dark but by Coulson’s half open shirt and when he realizes that he’s grateful, because if there’s anything he’d want to hide, it’s this. No one, no one but Phil gets to see him like this, never in his life before and there’ll never by anyone else again. It’s not so much pride(though there’s some, of course there’s some) as it is a reverse kind of possession. Coulson, he earned this with hard work and time and love and blood. No one else has ever made that much effort over him, no one else has ever deserved this right.   
  
When Coulson moves it’s not to try to take back the advantage, to put distance between them and make Clint let him look, to clear him the way he likes to when Clint comes in from a mission. He pulls him up, pulls Clint into his lap with those deceptively strong arms of his and tugs Clint’s mouth down to his, and from there it’s amazing it’s not over in thirty seconds. Somehow, they mostly strip, though Coulson keeps that white shirt hanging off his shoulders throughout. Clint doesn’t mind, doesn’t have it in him to care and besides, it’s kind of hot. He whispers that against Coulson’s ear, stilted and breathless with Coulson’s fingers recently slick from Clint’s mouth sliding inside him. Phil laughs, soft and low, and Clint fully gave up coherency in favor of shifting his focus to clinging tighter to the man in his arms. His thighs are shaking and they shouldn’t be, they’ve done much harder work than this, but the tremor works its way through his whole body anyway, muscles twitching under Coulson’s fingers like a strung out thoroughbred.   
  
The sensation of having Phil inside him again is enough to make him lightheaded, and he nearly comes too soon, crying out and writhing as soon as they’re joined. He feels full in a way his body remembers as strongly as his heart, everything in him seizing up in tandem as Phil breaks his usual relative quiet with a shuddering moan, muffling the sound as he bites into Clint’s shoulder. Clint can’t possibly last after that, and he murmurs a string of  _fuck_  that has Phil hauling him closer with one arm around his waist, the other hand sliding between them to fist around Clint’s cock. He comes in seconds, rocking down hard and with Phil’s grip tight and perfect around him. He’s limp and heavy on Coulson’s lap, utterly spent, and he wraps his arms around Coulson’s shoulders to moan encouragingly against his ear. For all he complains about his chatter over the coms, Coulson can never get enough of his voice. Coulson scrabbles at his hips, breath heavy as he thrusts up into him and comes with Clint’s name on his lips.   
  
They come down slowly, full of drawn out kisses and hands all over each other’s chests with lazy, greedy strokes, and somewhere in there Coulson finally loses the shirt and they kind of meld onto the bed, stretched out together and barely fitting. They overlap, too big for the space, and Clint is totally, totally ok with that.   
  
Clint’s wiped out, warm and exhausted and his body’s humming with the thrill of Phil’s fingers on his chest and the lingering ache in his ass, so the first question takes a minute to fully register with his brain.   
  
“This.” Phil’s thumb is smoothing over a scar on his abdomen, still an angry pink that he can’t possibly see in the dark, though it’s faded. “Explain this.”   
  
“Hm?” Clint’s not ready for coherent, certainly not ready for conversations he’s not looking forward to anyway. He’s perfectly fine with dazed and warm and making out until they fall asleep. That sounds excellent, but of course Phil won’t have it. “The stab wound, Clint, how’d it happen?” Knowing him like he does, he can tell that Phil’s still shaky too, still warm and buzzing, but Phil’s level of focus is unlike anything he’s ever seen. People think he’s good because he can spend hours in a hide but really, he’s got nothing on this man.   
  
Clint turns his head, nuzzles against Phil’s collarbone in a way he knows should be irresistible. “Shh. I’m speechless. You’ve rendered me speechless; enjoy it.”   
  
Phil’s lips press lightly against his temple, and he can feel the smile. “I could never render you speechless. You’re incapable.” Clint’s laughter is soft, muffled further against Coulson’s skin. Phil’s thumb strokes across the scar again, insistent. “What happened?”   
  
Honestly, it’s one of the tamer stories, but it’s not that specific telling that he dreads, it’s the whole that it’s a part of. In their time apart, he hasn’t exactly been careful. There’s a fine line between reckless and suicidal, and he’s danced all along it and mostly kept himself out of too much suspicion from the shrinks Fury kept sending him to, but even so he knows a few more of the nurses names now, and he certainly didn’t come out unscathed. The real core of it is, no matter how crazy the past few days have been, no matter how unlikely it is his secret will ever be discovered, his previous mental state isn’t something he wants Coulson asking too many questions about.   
  
“Well, as you brilliantly deduced,” Clint kisses him, tries to steal any sting from the words. “It’s a stab wound. There was a guy, and a knife, and it really wasn’t my priority since we were dealing with a few evil streetlamps at the time. It turned out alright.” Thinking about it he could remember the way the blood had spilled over his fingers as tried to keep the knife from jostling, remembered how he’d dragged his exhausted ass out of medical that night via picking a lock because he wasn’t about to wake up there, not when every other time he’d ever been stuck there overnight had resulted in Phil at his bedside with a cappuccino the next morning at an ungodly hour.   
  
“This?” His touch on the inside of Clint’s arm is so light it makes him shiver. The mark in question is newer, fresh from the time a few weeks ago when he got bitten by some psychoass mechanical snake of Doom’s. That one, that could’ve been serious.   
  
Maybe he can leave that part out, a bit.   
  
Clint covers Phil’s hand with his, guides his thumb to a little firmer pressure, and even if he’s still tracing the mark Clint’s touch has to be distracting. “I had, uh…” How does he even begin with that? ‘A crazy robot tried to poison me?’ “Doom makes weird shit; you know that. Sometimes it bites. I had to dig this…implant out.”   
  
He feels the breath Coulson sucks in, sharp and tight. “You had to-“  
  
“Would’ve taken too long to get to medical. Stark said…” Well, his exact words weren’t going to be repeated, but if they hadn’t been said right when they had, the two of them wouldn’t have been having this conversation. “I still had broad tip arrows; it worked out alright.” It had hurt like hell, and even though he’d been quick he’d still blacked out from the poison, cracking his head on the brick behind him. Coulson didn’t need to know all that.   
  
There has to be more, there’s definitely at least one more new addition Clint remembers on his back, but Coulson doesn’t try to pull his hand away from Clint to resume his inventory. He lets it be held, and he nestles his head against Clint’s shoulder, his voice just a little lower when he speaks.   
  
“I heard them talking about you, after I came back. Steve was a guilty mess. He seemed to think he drove you away.”   
  
“He didn’t.” But maybe he was going to need to make a point of that, because seriously when it came to his team, Rogers could worry like no other.   
  
“Everyone seemed to think…” He cleared his throat, clearly not finding the right words and for Coulson, that was an incredible rarity. Clint, words just tumbled out of his mouth and occasionally he found what he meant to say through trial and error. Phil, Phil planned. “They were all worried like hell about you. I-“   
  
With quick fingers, Clint covered his lips. “Let me stop you there, alright? Don’t ask a question you already know the answer to. You know it’s not one you’ll like.” He was gentle saying it, but even then, the words still weren’t quite right, not enough and really, honestly, this was half of why he talked all the time. So often he just couldn’t get it right. “Sweetheart…” That sounded better at least, the taste of a word on his tongue he’d only been addressing the air with for months. “I wake up out of that…that godawful trance, and we save the world and then they tell me you’re gone, and the first thing I’m thinking is…”  
  
He’d thought with Coulson here in his arms, so blatantly alive, he’d be able to say the one thing he hadn’t said even to the silence, the one thought he’d kept inside him, buried and twisting until he watched that horrible tape. There’s a weight in his throat, like the words are literally pressing down on his insides and it’s all he can do to struggle against their pressure.  
  
“They told me it was Loki, but I couldn’t shake the thought that there might be something I couldn’t remember, because God knows the fucker’s sadistic enough; I mean I know Thor loves the guy and being in my position I can’t and don’t pretend to understand, but even Thor admits that much. When he’s pissed he’s cruel and I…”  
  
Coulson’s lips caught his, silencing the ramble of his darkest fears. He hadn’t had to live with the thoughts for too long, but God, he remembered having them. He remembered the tremor in his hands when he realized it, realized all they told him was that Loki had killed him and for a while there, for a while he  _was_  Loki’s hands. He’d well and truly lost it then, shut himself up in his bathroom and heaved up everything he possibly had to lose, not much considering he hadn’t eaten anything since after the battle.   
  
“You’d never.” He feels the words against his lips, but it’s the absolute sincerity of them that shakes him, the kind of unflappable certainty Phil has in him that never ceases to astound him.   
  
Clint swallows around the bitter taste in his mouth, his mind flickering with images he’ll never forget. “I killed agents, Coulson. I killed good agents, and I nearly brought down the helicarrier and-“  
  
“And if he’d tried to make you stab me, you’d have put an arrow in his throat.” He tugs on Clint’s hand, rolling to the side and reaching up to cradle the back of Clint’s head, fingers burying gently in his hair. “With as long as I’ve trusted you, Barton, I’ve never been wrong.”   
  
Of all the things he could’ve said, it’s just those words that in a perfect world might make him feel better, but not now, not anymore. The reminder of just how trustworthy he isn’t burns under his skin, and for a second there’s the fleeting feeling that if this guilt gets worse every year, by the time he gets to ten he’s going to be twitchy.   
  
He takes a deep breath, smiles to keep up appearances. “Don’t lie. I’ve done things you wanted to wring my neck for personally.”   
  
“You have, but-and this is not exactly a statement of approval-just because I would prefer you not do something insane doesn’t mean you’re not doing it with the right intentions.”   
  
Everything in his chest hurts, a tight, sharp stabbing his ribs, and still he smiles as he leans in for a kiss. “There’s a method in my madness.”   
  
“Something like that.”   
  
They lapse into silence, trading soft kisses until Phil’s head shifts to press his lips to Clint’s forehead. His fingers are tight on Clint’s neck, every inch of his body pressed close, and there’s such a fierce tenderness to it it takes his breath.   
  
For a second, that is, and then his mouth is rushing on ahead, running off without him.   
  
“Marry me.”   
  
Fuck, he didn’t mean to say it like this, not now, not this soon and not without a ring, but his mind is swirling mess of guilt and ticking clocks and want and that kiss was the last brick to push him over, to bring the love he has for this man flooding his veins like a force of nature.   
  
“Clint-“  
  
His heart’s pounding, a thousand miles an hour it feels like and he speaks up, cutting him off because he can only think of one objection.   
  
“No, I mean it, I’m not just-“ Amazingly, all that sounded like almost one word. “I had your ring. I had it, and I was a _fucking_  idiot, and a few months ago I shot it into the woods upstate because I thought I’d lost my chance, so when I tell you I mean this I really, really-“  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Yes?” They kiss, the taste of Coulson on his tongue wiping away the taste of fear that had risen to choke him.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
In this moment, with Coulson in his arms and on his way to being his husband, the heavy guilt he hasn’t been able to shake since he realized he’d really pawned off his soul was all but gone. Ten years seems like an eternity, a fucking _lifetime_. He can feel Coulson’s heart beating against his chest where he’s pressed warm up against Clint’s side, and Clint turns in towards it like a cat soaking up summer sun. Ten years? Fuck, the past hour’s felt like forever. It’s enough time for what it bought him, for what it bought them both. More than enough.   
  
The next day, on the way to a briefing about the persistent problems they’ve had with the sewers lately, Tony slides a drive into his pocket, not quite hiding it behind a new phone he says Clint needs, since he apparently couldn’t be bothered to pay enough attention to his old one. He knows what it is, absolutely, but he still grins like an idiot when he opens the file later that afternoon.   
  
 _So I might’ve conned the guards into giving me their shift, and I also might’ve pulled this from the archives and looped the next few hours back in to make it look complete. It’ll fool no one, but they’ll have no other choice. You’re welcome._  
  
 _Tell Coulson I expect immunity from his wrath for the rest of forever, and I don’t want to do paperwork in any form for at least six months._


End file.
